Tessa M Pollard
Biographic Data
| ID | 88286 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tessa M Pollard |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tessa M |
| FAMILY NAME | Pollard |
| SIGNATURE | POLLARD T M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Anthropology Durham University Durham Durham UK |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 283 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Socioeconomic correlates of sedentary time during pregnancy among women at risk of gestational diabetes in the UK
Little is known about the relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and duration and patterning of objectively measured sedentary time (ST) among adults, especially adults at high risk of diabetes. The aim of this study was to examine cross-sectional associations of SEP with ST (total, prolonged ST, breaks in ST) and self-reported TV time among pregnant women at risk of gestational diabetes in the UK. At 20 weeks’ gestation, pregnant wome…
He called me out of the blue: An ethnographic exploration of contrasting temporalities in a social prescribing intervention
Social prescribing, a way of connecting patients to local services, is central to the NHS Personalised Care agenda. This paper employs ethnographic data, generated with 19 participants between November 2018 and July 2020, to explore the socio-temporal relations shaping their experiences of a local social prescribing intervention. Our focus is on the ways in which the intervention synchronised with the multitude of shifting, complex and often cont…
Social prescribing and classed inequality: A journey of upward health mobility
Social prescribing, characterised by a link worker connecting patients with local groups and services, is currently being widely implemented in the UK. Taking clients' experiences of a social prescribing intervention in the North of England between November 2019 and July 2020 as its focus, this paper employs ethnographic methods to explore the complex social contexts in which social prescribing is delivered. Building on Bourdieusian approaches to…
Communal therapeutic mobility in group walking: A meta-ethnography
Sit Yourself Down: Women's Experiences of Negotiating Physical Activity During Pregnancy
Approaches to understanding why physical activity (PA) tends to decline during pregnancy are generally based on individualized behavioral models, examining "barriers" or "enablers." In contrast, we used a social practice approach to explore the ways in which women negotiate PA during pregnancy within the contexts and routines of their everyday lives. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 18 pregnant women who had been classed as being at …
Associations of sedentary time and self-reported television time during pregnancy with incident gestational diabetes and plasma glucose levels in women at risk of gestational diabetes in the UK
This is the first study to test associations between posture-based measures of sedentary time during pregnancy and GDM and glucose levels. The findings presented here suggest the possible importance of minimizing or breaking up sedentary time for the management of glucose levels during pregnancy, at least among women at high risk of GDM. Further research is needed to understand the different roles of total sedentary time and television time in th…
"Group walking as a "lifeline: Understanding the place of outdoor walking groups in women's lives
Organised walking groups are increasingly widespread in the UK and elsewhere and have been shown to have many benefits for participants. They tend to attract more women than men, but little is known about how and why walking groups 'recruit' women. This is of particular importance given observed inequalities in physical activity participation by gender, in favour of men. To explore women's participation in walking groups, we conducted ethnographi…
Could Parental Rules Play a Role in the Association Between Short Sleep and Obesity in Young Children?
Short sleep duration is associated with obesity in young children. This study develops the hypothesis that parental rules play a role in this association. Participants were 3-year-old children and their parents, recruited at nursery schools in socioeconomically deprived and non-deprived areas of a North-East England town. Parents were interviewed to assess their use of sleep, television-viewing and dietary rules, and given diaries to document the…
Differences between 9–11 year old British Pakistani and White British girls in physical activity and behavior during school recess
British Pakistani girls were less active than White British girls during school recess. Recess has been identified as a potentially important target for the delivery of physical activity interventions; such interventions should consider ways in which the activity levels of British Pakistani girls could be increased
Adiposity and blood pressure in 7‐ to 11‐year‐old children: Comparison of British Pakistani and white British children, and of British Pakistani children of migrant and British‐born mothers
OBJECTIVES: This study tested hypotheses that: (1) levels of adiposity, as assessed by triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses (SFTs), and blood pressure would be higher in British Pakistani children than in white British children; and (2) British Pakistani children of mothers born in the UK would have smaller SFTs and lower blood pressure than children of mothers born in Pakistan. METHODS: Participants aged 7 to 11 years were recruited from…
Birth weight and early socio‐economic disadvantage as predictors of sex hormones and sex hormone binding globulin in men at age 49–51 years
Objectives: A number of associations have been shown between early growth and later sex hormone levels in women, but less is known about this relationship in men. This study investigated lifecourse predictors of sex hormones in men in the Newcastle Thousand Families birth cohort. Methods: The Newcastle Thousand Families Study is a prospective study initiated in 1947. At age 49‐51 years, 574 study members returned detailed self‐completion question…
Intergenerational and familial approaches to obesity and related conditions
Obesity and related conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, are common and increasing in prevalence in most parts of the world (Hu 2008). Concern about the causes and implications of this phenomenon h
Ethnic Groups as Migrant Groups: Improving Understanding of Links Between Ethnicity/Race and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Associated Conditions
Most members of minority ethnic/racial groups in affluent western societies are recent immigrants or immediate descendants thereof. The health implications of ethnic groups also being migrant groups are important but often not fully explored. Research demonstrating developmental influences on the risk of type 2 diabetes and associated conditions suggests that migrants will differ in disease risk compared with the general population. It also leads…
Predictors of Age at Menarche in the Newcastle Thousand Families Study
Several studies have found relationships between early life factors (birth weight, length of gestation, height, weight, duration of breast-feeding, maternal age, social class, periods of infection, presence of adverse life events, and quality of housing conditions in childhood) and age at menarche but none has considered all of these factors in the same study. The follow-up study of the Newcastle Thousand Families birth cohort, established in 194…
Differences in body composition and cardiovascular and Type 2 diabetes risk factors between migrant and British‐born British Pakistani women
There is a high prevalence of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes in people of South Asian origin living in affluent western countries. We do not know whether or how risk factors for these diseases change in subsequent generations born in the west. Findings that birth‐weight is inversely associated with abdominal obesity and risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes in later life suggest that those born in the west may have lower …
Do blood pressure and heart rate responses to perceived stress vary according to endogenous estrogen level in women
The results of experimental studies suggest that estrogen may blunt blood pressure responses to stress, but increase heart rate responses. We investigated whether within‐person associations of perceived stress with blood pressure and heart rate during normal working life in 26 premenopausal and 7 postmenopausal women varied according to endogenous estrogen level. Each woman measured her own blood pressure and heart rate and completed a diary repo…
Sex hormone-binding globulin and androgen levels in immigrant and British-born premenopausal British Pakistani women: Evidence of early life influences
In women, raised insulin levels are associated with low sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) and high androgen levels, which are in turn linked to infertility. Since insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia are major health problems for South Asians living in Western countries, we predicted that British Pakistani women would have low SHBG and raised androgen levels compared to European women. Given low birth weights in Pakistan, and known links bet…
Measuring demographic group differences in cardiovascular reactivity to stress using a mental challenge in the laboratory: Problems of interpretation
Editor,—In their recent paper Carroll et al 1 showed that men and women in non-manual occupations exhibited greater diastolic blood pressure and heart rate responses to a mental arithmetic test than did people in manual occupations, a finding that they contrasted with known socioeconomic patterning of cardiovascular disease. They also demonstrated lower systolic blood pressure and heart rate reactivity to the test in women, which they considered …
Modernisation and children's blood pressure: On and off the tourist trail in Nepal
Blood pressure and anthropometric measurements were taken for 231 children between 11 and 14 years in the Annapurna area of Central Nepal, a popular tourist destination. Children from villages on the tourist trail, whose lifestyles were generally more modernised, were compared with children from nearby villages off the tourist trail. Indications of greater modernisation on the trail included the findings that fathers of children living on the tra…
Sex, Gender and Health
It is widely recognised that men and women in societies all over the world have very different experiences of sickness and health. This collection brings together biological and social anthropologists whose work illustrates how these sub-disciplines have approached the task of explaining such differences. We demonstrate that an understanding of science and culture, using the notions of biological 'sex' and socio-culturally constructed 'gender' ar…
Motives Underlying Healthy Eating: Using the Food Choice Questionnaire to Explain Variation in Dietary Intake
The Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ), which measures the reported importance to a given individual of nine factors underlying food choice, and a food frequency questionnaire, were administered to 241 participants, who were also required to classify their diet as either 'standard', 'low in red meat' or 'vegetarian'. Respondents describing their diet as low in red meat attributed greater importance to health, natural content, weight control and ethi…
Environmental change and cardiovascular disease: A new complexity
Environmental change and cardiovascular disease: A new complexity
Cardiovascular disease has for many years been considered a lifestyle disease, caused by westernisation or modernisation. The most important lifestyle risk factors are thought to be diet (particularly high levels of saturated fats and excess salt), lack of physical activity, obesity, psychosocial stress and smoking, all of which are identified with modern living in industrial societies. This paradigm goes some way towards explaining observed inte…
Human Energetics in Biological Anthropology
Use of cortisol as a stress marker: Practical and theoretical problems
Human biologists have shown increasing interest in the use of cortisol as an objective marker of stress in recent years. This paper reviews both practical and theoretical problems raised by this approach. The methodology of cortisol assessment using urine, saliva, and plasma is considered. There are many practical problems involved in obtaining good measures of cortisol, although the availability of salivary assays offers a promising way forward.…
Development of a Measure of the Motives Underlying the Selection of Food: The Food Choice Questionnaire
Social prescribing and classed inequality: A journey of upward health mobility
Social prescribing, characterised by a link worker connecting patients with local groups and services, is currently being widely implemented in the UK. Taking clients' experiences of a social prescribing intervention in the North of England between November 2019 and July 2020 as its focus, this paper employs ethnographic methods to explore the complex social contexts in which social prescribing is delivered. Building on Bourdieusian approaches to…
"Group walking as a "lifeline: Understanding the place of outdoor walking groups in women's lives
Organised walking groups are increasingly widespread in the UK and elsewhere and have been shown to have many benefits for participants. They tend to attract more women than men, but little is known about how and why walking groups 'recruit' women. This is of particular importance given observed inequalities in physical activity participation by gender, in favour of men. To explore women's participation in walking groups, we conducted ethnographi…
Communal therapeutic mobility in group walking: A meta-ethnography
He called me out of the blue: An ethnographic exploration of contrasting temporalities in a social prescribing intervention
Social prescribing, a way of connecting patients to local services, is central to the NHS Personalised Care agenda. This paper employs ethnographic data, generated with 19 participants between November 2018 and July 2020, to explore the socio-temporal relations shaping their experiences of a local social prescribing intervention. Our focus is on the ways in which the intervention synchronised with the multitude of shifting, complex and often cont…
Sit Yourself Down: Women's Experiences of Negotiating Physical Activity During Pregnancy
Approaches to understanding why physical activity (PA) tends to decline during pregnancy are generally based on individualized behavioral models, examining "barriers" or "enablers." In contrast, we used a social practice approach to explore the ways in which women negotiate PA during pregnancy within the contexts and routines of their everyday lives. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 18 pregnant women who had been classed as being at …
Ethnic Groups as Migrant Groups: Improving Understanding of Links Between Ethnicity/Race and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Associated Conditions
Most members of minority ethnic/racial groups in affluent western societies are recent immigrants or immediate descendants thereof. The health implications of ethnic groups also being migrant groups are important but often not fully explored. Research demonstrating developmental influences on the risk of type 2 diabetes and associated conditions suggests that migrants will differ in disease risk compared with the general population. It also leads…
Use of cortisol as a stress marker: Practical and theoretical problems
Human biologists have shown increasing interest in the use of cortisol as an objective marker of stress in recent years. This paper reviews both practical and theoretical problems raised by this approach. The methodology of cortisol assessment using urine, saliva, and plasma is considered. There are many practical problems involved in obtaining good measures of cortisol, although the availability of salivary assays offers a promising way forward.…
Development of a Measure of the Motives Underlying the Selection of Food: The Food Choice Questionnaire
Human Energetics in Biological Anthropology
Environmental change and cardiovascular disease: A new complexity
Environmental change and cardiovascular disease: A new complexity
Cardiovascular disease has for many years been considered a lifestyle disease, caused by westernisation or modernisation. The most important lifestyle risk factors are thought to be diet (particularly high levels of saturated fats and excess salt), lack of physical activity, obesity, psychosocial stress and smoking, all of which are identified with modern living in industrial societies. This paradigm goes some way towards explaining observed inte…
Motives Underlying Healthy Eating: Using the Food Choice Questionnaire to Explain Variation in Dietary Intake
The Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ), which measures the reported importance to a given individual of nine factors underlying food choice, and a food frequency questionnaire, were administered to 241 participants, who were also required to classify their diet as either 'standard', 'low in red meat' or 'vegetarian'. Respondents describing their diet as low in red meat attributed greater importance to health, natural content, weight control and ethi…
Sex, Gender and Health
It is widely recognised that men and women in societies all over the world have very different experiences of sickness and health. This collection brings together biological and social anthropologists whose work illustrates how these sub-disciplines have approached the task of explaining such differences. We demonstrate that an understanding of science and culture, using the notions of biological 'sex' and socio-culturally constructed 'gender' ar…
Modernisation and children's blood pressure: On and off the tourist trail in Nepal
Blood pressure and anthropometric measurements were taken for 231 children between 11 and 14 years in the Annapurna area of Central Nepal, a popular tourist destination. Children from villages on the tourist trail, whose lifestyles were generally more modernised, were compared with children from nearby villages off the tourist trail. Indications of greater modernisation on the trail included the findings that fathers of children living on the tra…
Measuring demographic group differences in cardiovascular reactivity to stress using a mental challenge in the laboratory: Problems of interpretation
Editor,—In their recent paper Carroll et al 1 showed that men and women in non-manual occupations exhibited greater diastolic blood pressure and heart rate responses to a mental arithmetic test than did people in manual occupations, a finding that they contrasted with known socioeconomic patterning of cardiovascular disease. They also demonstrated lower systolic blood pressure and heart rate reactivity to the test in women, which they considered …
Sex hormone-binding globulin and androgen levels in immigrant and British-born premenopausal British Pakistani women: Evidence of early life influences
In women, raised insulin levels are associated with low sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) and high androgen levels, which are in turn linked to infertility. Since insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia are major health problems for South Asians living in Western countries, we predicted that British Pakistani women would have low SHBG and raised androgen levels compared to European women. Given low birth weights in Pakistan, and known links bet…
Do blood pressure and heart rate responses to perceived stress vary according to endogenous estrogen level in women
The results of experimental studies suggest that estrogen may blunt blood pressure responses to stress, but increase heart rate responses. We investigated whether within‐person associations of perceived stress with blood pressure and heart rate during normal working life in 26 premenopausal and 7 postmenopausal women varied according to endogenous estrogen level. Each woman measured her own blood pressure and heart rate and completed a diary repo…
Predictors of Age at Menarche in the Newcastle Thousand Families Study
Several studies have found relationships between early life factors (birth weight, length of gestation, height, weight, duration of breast-feeding, maternal age, social class, periods of infection, presence of adverse life events, and quality of housing conditions in childhood) and age at menarche but none has considered all of these factors in the same study. The follow-up study of the Newcastle Thousand Families birth cohort, established in 194…
Differences in body composition and cardiovascular and Type 2 diabetes risk factors between migrant and British‐born British Pakistani women
There is a high prevalence of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes in people of South Asian origin living in affluent western countries. We do not know whether or how risk factors for these diseases change in subsequent generations born in the west. Findings that birth‐weight is inversely associated with abdominal obesity and risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes in later life suggest that those born in the west may have lower …
Adiposity and blood pressure in 7‐ to 11‐year‐old children: Comparison of British Pakistani and white British children, and of British Pakistani children of migrant and British‐born mothers
OBJECTIVES: This study tested hypotheses that: (1) levels of adiposity, as assessed by triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses (SFTs), and blood pressure would be higher in British Pakistani children than in white British children; and (2) British Pakistani children of mothers born in the UK would have smaller SFTs and lower blood pressure than children of mothers born in Pakistan. METHODS: Participants aged 7 to 11 years were recruited from…
Birth weight and early socio‐economic disadvantage as predictors of sex hormones and sex hormone binding globulin in men at age 49–51 years
Objectives: A number of associations have been shown between early growth and later sex hormone levels in women, but less is known about this relationship in men. This study investigated lifecourse predictors of sex hormones in men in the Newcastle Thousand Families birth cohort. Methods: The Newcastle Thousand Families Study is a prospective study initiated in 1947. At age 49‐51 years, 574 study members returned detailed self‐completion question…
Intergenerational and familial approaches to obesity and related conditions
Obesity and related conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, are common and increasing in prevalence in most parts of the world (Hu 2008). Concern about the causes and implications of this phenomenon h
Ethnic Groups as Migrant Groups: Improving Understanding of Links Between Ethnicity/Race and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Associated Conditions
Most members of minority ethnic/racial groups in affluent western societies are recent immigrants or immediate descendants thereof. The health implications of ethnic groups also being migrant groups are important but often not fully explored. Research demonstrating developmental influences on the risk of type 2 diabetes and associated conditions suggests that migrants will differ in disease risk compared with the general population. It also leads…
Differences between 9–11 year old British Pakistani and White British girls in physical activity and behavior during school recess
British Pakistani girls were less active than White British girls during school recess. Recess has been identified as a potentially important target for the delivery of physical activity interventions; such interventions should consider ways in which the activity levels of British Pakistani girls could be increased
Could Parental Rules Play a Role in the Association Between Short Sleep and Obesity in Young Children?
Short sleep duration is associated with obesity in young children. This study develops the hypothesis that parental rules play a role in this association. Participants were 3-year-old children and their parents, recruited at nursery schools in socioeconomically deprived and non-deprived areas of a North-East England town. Parents were interviewed to assess their use of sleep, television-viewing and dietary rules, and given diaries to document the…
Associations of sedentary time and self-reported television time during pregnancy with incident gestational diabetes and plasma glucose levels in women at risk of gestational diabetes in the UK
This is the first study to test associations between posture-based measures of sedentary time during pregnancy and GDM and glucose levels. The findings presented here suggest the possible importance of minimizing or breaking up sedentary time for the management of glucose levels during pregnancy, at least among women at high risk of GDM. Further research is needed to understand the different roles of total sedentary time and television time in th…
"Group walking as a "lifeline: Understanding the place of outdoor walking groups in women's lives
Organised walking groups are increasingly widespread in the UK and elsewhere and have been shown to have many benefits for participants. They tend to attract more women than men, but little is known about how and why walking groups 'recruit' women. This is of particular importance given observed inequalities in physical activity participation by gender, in favour of men. To explore women's participation in walking groups, we conducted ethnographi…
Communal therapeutic mobility in group walking: A meta-ethnography
Sit Yourself Down: Women's Experiences of Negotiating Physical Activity During Pregnancy
Approaches to understanding why physical activity (PA) tends to decline during pregnancy are generally based on individualized behavioral models, examining "barriers" or "enablers." In contrast, we used a social practice approach to explore the ways in which women negotiate PA during pregnancy within the contexts and routines of their everyday lives. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 18 pregnant women who had been classed as being at …
Social prescribing and classed inequality: A journey of upward health mobility
Social prescribing, characterised by a link worker connecting patients with local groups and services, is currently being widely implemented in the UK. Taking clients' experiences of a social prescribing intervention in the North of England between November 2019 and July 2020 as its focus, this paper employs ethnographic methods to explore the complex social contexts in which social prescribing is delivered. Building on Bourdieusian approaches to…
Socioeconomic correlates of sedentary time during pregnancy among women at risk of gestational diabetes in the UK
Little is known about the relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and duration and patterning of objectively measured sedentary time (ST) among adults, especially adults at high risk of diabetes. The aim of this study was to examine cross-sectional associations of SEP with ST (total, prolonged ST, breaks in ST) and self-reported TV time among pregnant women at risk of gestational diabetes in the UK. At 20 weeks’ gestation, pregnant wome…
Medicine (24 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Internal Medicine (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Demography (10 works) · Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet (9 works) · Endocrinology (7 works) · Internal Medicine (7 works) · Disease (6 works) · Blood pressure (5 works)